


The Towers of Corelia

by twistedchick



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 19:37:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8070064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedchick/pseuds/twistedchick
Summary: Han Solo has come a long way since Corelia.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I dreamed this, and when I awoke I couldn't get the blue towers out of my mind, or the people. And so I wrote this. It is very AU. Apologies to anyone for whom it makes no sense.

In the Old Republic, Corelia shone as one of its finest jewels. Its stone towers stretched so far into the sky that clouds curled around their balconies. The stone of which they had been carved was so deep, so true a color that it rivaled the hot noon sky. Neither turquoise nor lapis, Corelian Blue was a legend among the designers and builders across the Old Republic, because none could figure out how that color had been created.

That was before the Empire arose, and the towers greyed at the edges from neglect.

None of that celestial blue could be found in the rain-drenched alley between the highest towers, where the boy hid, shaking with cold, damp and nerves. He shoved his wet hair out of his eyes and stared toward the docking area, where a ship stood with its hatch open. If he could run, if he could hide well enough, he might be safe.

Heavy footsteps, running, came toward him and he shrank into the pile of boxes where he hid and held his breath. They passed. He counted: yes, all of them continued. It was as safe as it would ever be. 

He ran.

Out the alley, into the light – near-blinding brightness to anyone not brought up in its glory – up the ramp, into the ship. 

The cargo hold? No, it would be unpressurized when the ship hit space, and cold enough to freeze him within minutes if he didn't die first of lack of air. But there was a closet, with cleaning goods in it. Not the first priority for any working ship.

He hid behind a cleaning droid and its supplies. It rumbled a moment and stilled when he touched its panel of buttons. It had no real intelligence, just the ability to detect and eliminate dirt. He glanced down at his clothes, and shrugged; no wonder it had awakened. As soon as he could steal something else to wear…

It was warm behind the droid, warmer than it had been in the alley, and he dropped off to sleep.

Noise never woke him; he slept through the force of liftoff and the tiny rumbles of cruising speed. Light did – when the door of his refuge opened, and a rumbling voice said, "We have a passenger."

A deeper rumble, from behind the first. "Dangerous?"

"I don't think so."

"Then give it some food and ask what it needs."

He realized as he woke that the voices weren't speaking Standard Galactic, but an older language, from a planet halfway to the Rim. Wookiee. For no good reason, it felt reassuring. He knew a little of it, from hanging around the docks -- Wookiees were great travelers – and they labeled anything about which they knew nothing as "it", so that was not an insult or a dismissal.

"Come out, please." The first voice invaded his thoughts. He stood, moving out slowly from behind the cleaning bot. "Are you hungry?"

He nodded. "I could eat," he said in fragmentary Wookiee language, forgetting the honorific and the particles.

"I can take care of that." The speaker was a young Wookiee, not grown to his full height or strength. "Follow me."  
Wookiees were carnivores. He hoped the food would be cooked. But when the plate arrived on the table in front of him it held fruit, some cooked vegetables, a kind of cooked grain with mild spices, and a piece of grilled meat that smelled all right. He thanked the Wookiee and offered some of it back – a gesture of politeness was never a bad idea – but the Wookiee shook his head and indicated that it was all for him.

Nothing ever tasted so good. 

The plate was empty before he realized it.

"More?"

He could not remember the polite way to say no, thank you, so he shook his head. "A drink?"

The young Wookiee got him a tall glass of water – an extravagance in some worlds. He drank about half and set it down, his hands wrapped around its base to give them something to do.

At this point the deeper-voiced Wookiee arrived. This was someone of stature, based on his decorated bandolier and the medallion on the gold chain around his neck. "Has hospitality been offered?" he rumbled.

"And accepted, and offered back."

The older Wookiee glanced at him, not displeased. "Then we may ask now." He sat at the table. "Visitor, may we ask your name and what you need?" 

He drew a deep breath, and tried to look more than 10 years old. "My name is Han Solo of Corelia, and I need sanctuary."  
The Wookiees rumbled an impossible-to-translate greeting and he shook hands with each of them in turn. And he learned their names: Chewbacca, the younger one, and his uncle, Kofetakka. They all settled back again, the Wookiees obviously waiting for him to explain.

"I was in the market with my friend Joie, and an Imperial soldier kicked him – it might have been an accident – and he yelled. And the soldier turned and shot him. So I threw a rock and hit the soldier in the head and he went down. And I ran."

"You don't know if it's dead?"

"I didn't want to wait to find out."

The Wookiees glanced at one another and rumbled in a dialect Han didn't know.

At length Kofetakka said, slowly, "Kashyyyk has no treaty of exchange with the Empire, and is not under their rule. We are not obliged to return you. You may stay, if you will do work on the ship."

"Yes. Thank you. Yes."

Chewbacca stood. "Come with me. I'll find you a bunk."

"Thank you," Han said again, in case it wasn't clear enough, and heard Kofetakka's rumbling laugh. 

He ran to catch up to Chewbacca, who pressed the button to open access to a small room with a bed. "Will this do?"

"Yes." He gulped. "Why?"

"Why are we doing this?"

Han nodded. 

"It is our custom to receive strangers and offer hospitality. And you both accepted it and offered me some of your food, when you were hungry. And you defended your friend from the Empire." Chewbacca looked thoughtful. "We do not often see humans who do these things."

He pointed to a closet. "Some human clothes there, I think."

The room had a small porthole window, showing stars moving past.

"Sorry," Chewbacca said.

"What? Why?"

"If I'd found you sooner, you could have seen your home one more time."

"It's ok."

But the next day, after he finished cleaning dishes and checking the stockroom to get to know what kind of food was there and how much, when he came back to the room that night there was a picture of the towers, with the clouds wreathing them, as the screensaver on the panel on his wall.

* * *

He scrubbed, and indexed boxes, and learned to cook. He learned to navigate, to find a path from one place to another that would avoid any obstacles in the way. And he learned to be a pilot, under Chewbacca's watchful eye, and to shoot with the weapons array in the gunport. When the ship was grounded for trading or supplies, or because Kofetakka had someone he wanted to visit, he and Chewbacca explored wherever they were, learning the languages and people of the Empire from the underside, not from the tops of mist-shrouded towers. 

One day, a few years later, Chewbacca took him aside after the evening meal – the two of them were on second watch – and said, "There is something you must learn."

"Okay." Han settled on a bench. "What is it?"

Chewbacca reeled off a long string of Wookiee names, stopping when Han held up one hand. "What is this?"

"This is the lineage of our family, you must learn. " Chewbacca's eyes looked sad. "The Empire is trying to find you; the soldier died. We wish to protect you by making you part of this Wookiee clan. That makes you a Wookiee. "

"And to do this –"

"You need to know the secret names of our clan lineage. If someone asks your country, you tell them it is Kashyyyk, and you demand to be questioned by a Wookiee. When they do, you recite this, and they must give you all the rights of a Wookiee. It does not matter that you are small and furless. Only Wookiees know these names." Chewbacca looked at him closely. "Unless you still want to be Corellian? You still have family there?"

Han shook his head. "My mother is dead. My father was the fifth son of the third daughter of the eighth wife of a second-level Cham. The family money didn't stretch that far. He had a little diner on the edge of the business district, and twelve other children; he probably hasn't realized that I'm gone yet."

Chewbacca rested a large warm hand on his shoulder. "Then you are one of us." He smiled, all teeth and fur and merry blue eyes. "I always wanted a little brother." The word actually meant bear cub, but Han understood the affection behind it, and cuffed him back.

Han learned the names that night. He never had to use them; his big brother was always there to protect him, and help him talk his way out of trouble. But knowing that he could use them warmed him in a way he never expected. As a child he'd understood that belonging—to a place, to a person – was not for him, yet here he belonged with Chewbacca and Kofetakka, and the dozens and dozens of other Wookies who, when he visited Kashyyyk, greeted him and welcomed him and made him feel at home.

It was several years later when Kofetakka turned to him as he sat in the copilot's seat. "You have become a good pilot."

"Thank you, uncle."

"How old are you now?"

There was some discrepancy between the length of a Corelian year and a Wookie one. He did the math in his head and came out with, "18 years Wookie, about 20 years Corelian."

"It is in my mind to give you a coming-of-age gift."

Han bowed his head. "I am grateful."

"You're a good nephew. When we land, I will show you."

The ship touched down at the docks on a planet Han had never seen before. Kofetakka led him and Chewbacca into the midst of a field of ships, all for sale. "Choose one."

"Uncle?"

"Choose one."

Han looked them over, all of them. Some were so new they gleamed with an untouched factory-fresh shine; some were scratched enough that the shine came from oils meant to hide the scrapes. But a freighter from the second rank of ships kept catching his eye, and he went inside it and looked over the panels surrounding the pilots' chairs, and peered into the engine, and examined the cargo space and the living areas and the gunner's bay. Someone had scratched a name on the panel next to the pilot's seat – Millennium Falcon – with a sketch of a soaring bird next to it.

"This one." 

Kofetakka nodded. "It is in good shape, for so old a ship. Perhaps it reminds you of home. It was built on Corelia."

"Perhaps. Though it's not blue." 

"You could paint it."

"Maybe inside. Don't want to be that obvious."

Kofetakka let loose his rumbling laugh. "You are never obvious, Han, except when you try not to be." He made some signal to the seller, and the deal was done. "I'm not turning you loose on the universe alone. Chewbacca will go with you. I am needed on the planet for a while; I will give you the names of our trading partners and set things up for a start. After that, you two are on your own."

"Uncle, I am overwhelmed."

"Not too overwhelmed to fix the compressor valve before you take off, I hope," Kofetakka walked away, smiling. Over his shoulder he said, "Be sure to get your things before I leave, or you will have less than when you came to us."

The compressor did need work, but Chewbacca brought Han's bag with him when he came back, dumped it into a bunk, and handed Han the scarper wrench.

In a small corner of his bunk, Han sketched the shape of his family's home tower into the metal wall. When he found the paint, he touched it up, Corelian blue and gold, the colors of the midday sky and the sun. And next to the tower Han had scratched in one of the forest houses of Kashyyyk, and painted it.

Chewbacca never said a word. He knew they were both home already.


End file.
